I don’t know who you think you are. That’s what Chris said to me, followed by some unsavory name-calling that genuinely hurt my feelings.

Photo: Luis Quintero, Unsplash
His reaction was strong—much stronger than I anticipated when I decided to hold him accountable to making more godly choices than he had in his recent past before he knew Jesus.
Chris was a sophomore in college, and I hadn’t seen him since he left Ocean City, Maryland seven months previous. I heard through another student that he had started drinking again and was back in the thick of the hard-partying lifestyle he committed to leaving only a few months before he arrived in Ocean City for the ten-week long summer mission I run each year.
I have been a full-time missionary working with college students for over twenty years, so I’ve seen students make the kind of choices Chris was making plenty of times before. But that didn’t make what he said to me any less painful.